By the time Maleah pinned Michelle to the floor, both women were bloody and breathless. Sweat glistened on their skin.
“Oh, God, please,” Michelle whimpered. “Jaelyn . . .”
Griff, Nic, and Shaughnessy rushed into the room and halted abruptly behind Derek. They looked past him to where Maleah straddled a defeated Michelle.
Derek holstered his weapon and with the others at his back, he rushed over to Maleah, yanked down her robe that had hiked up to the edge of her buttocks, and then pulled her off Michelle and into his arms. Breathing heavily, she put one arm around him as she looked down at her opponent.
Griff and Shaughnessy lifted a bruised and battered Michelle to her feet. Shaughnessy quickly yanked her arms behind her, shoved her in front of him and held her securely.
“She kept saying that Linden had her niece and he would kill her if she didn’t do what he told her to do,” Maleah explained. “She admitted that she killed Shiloh.”
“Luke called. He found Linden,” Griff said. “Apparently Linden had been ordered to abduct Jaelyn Allen and hold her captive as a way to control Michelle and force her to kill for him.”
“Jaelyn?” Michelle asked pleadingly. “Is she all right?”
“Your niece is fine,” Griff told her. “Luke and Meredith are bringing her back to the U.S. as soon as possible. They’ll take her home to your brother and his wife.”
Moments after hearing the good news about Jaelyn, Michelle fell apart emotionally, weeping, shaking her head, and muttering incoherently. Shaughnessy gently led her from the room.
Nic grabbed Maleah out of Derek’s arms and hugged her. Then she stepped back and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Thank God you’re all right.”
Griff put his arm around Nic’s shoulders.
Maleah looked at Derek. He reached out and swiped away the smear of blood from her mouth. “Blondie, don’t you ever scare me like that again. When I saw Michelle holding a gun on you . . . Maleah Perdue, if anything had happened to you . . .”
She offered him a fragile smile. “You’re my hero, you know.”
“Who, me?” He pointed to his chest.
“Yes, you. If you hadn’t startled Michelle, I might not have gotten the opportunity to catch her off guard the way I did.” She lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck. “And you’re my hero because once you saw I could handle the situation without your help, you let me fight my own battle.”
Chapter 36
Derek had held her in his arms all night Friday night and finally sometime over in the morning, she had fallen asleep.
Maleah awoke to a new day, yet she was haunted by yesterday’s events. Physically, she ached like hell from the beating Michelle had given her. Emotionally, she was a wreck. Her thoughts and feelings were all over the place. She was shocked and angry and sad about Michelle’s betrayal and equally sympathetic about the intolerable choice Michelle had been forced to make. Maleah wanted to believe that if she had been put in such a horrific position, she would have chosen a better solution. Poor Michelle, her life was all but destroyed.
What was going to happen now that Anthony Linden was dead? Would it be only a matter of time before the pseudo-York sent another gun-for-hire to terrorize Griff?
Most of Saturday passed in a blur. Sanders chauffeured them—Nic and Griff, Shaughnessy, Derek and Maleah—to the sheriff’s department to give their statements concerning the attempt on Maleah’s life. A distraught Michelle had confessed that she had killed Shiloh Whitman and had been ordered to kill Maleah. Griff had contacted Camden Hendrix, an old friend and head of a law firm the Powell Agency kept on retainer. Despite what Michelle had done, Griff had instructed Cam to provide her with the best legal representation possible. Griffin Powell believed that, no matter what, you took care of your own.
After their trip to the sheriff’s office, Maleah and Derek spent most of the day with Nic and Griff and Griff didn’t mention anything about Nic being pregnant. When Maleah and Nic were finally alone for a few minutes, Maleah asked Nic why she hadn’t told her husband about their baby.
“I’m going to tell him. But not yet. Not for a few more days. Not until we all have a chance to come to terms with what Michelle did and sort of get our bearings.”
And so that was what they did the rest of the day Saturday—tried to get their bearings in a sea of mixed emotions.
Saturday night Derek made love to her so slowly and tenderly that she cried. And being the man that he was, he understood that those tears of joy also released a myriad of pent-up emotions. A lifetime of emotions.
Odd that in the midst of all the chaos and upheaval in their lives, she could, on a very personal level, be so happy. Happier than she had ever been in her entire life. She loved Derek Lawrence and he loved her.
That morning, after they made love again, Derek propped up on his elbow, looked down at her, and said, “I think you’re going to have to marry me.”
Smiling like a lovesick fool, she stared up at him and asked, “Why would you think that?”
He grinned. “Maybe it’s because I love you and you love me and I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life without you.” He swooped down and kissed her. Then he lifted his head and laughed. “I know it sounds corny, but I want your face to be the first thing I see every morning and the last thing I see every night.”
When she socked him in the chest, he fell over on his back and laid his hand over his heart.
“You’re right. That did sound corny.” She leaned down and nuzzled his nose with hers. “But since I happen to feel the same way, I think you’re right. You are going to have to marry me.”
Griffin Powell stared at the letter in his hand, the letter that had arrived special delivery this morning via an international courier. The return address was a hotel in London, Berkeley Knightsbridge, where Luke and Meredith had stayed.
If that was someone’s idea of a joke, that person had a truly warped sense of humor.
Griff had read and reread the letter before he called Yvette.
Once she arrived, Sanders joined them in Griff’s private study. Sanders closed and locked the door before Griff gave the letter to Yvette.
After she read the letter, she stared at Griff, a combination of doubt and hope in her eyes. “Could this possibly be true?”
“I don’t know.”
Yvette handed the letter to Sanders.
He read it quickly.
With concern in his black eyes, he looked from Yvette to Griff and said, “You cannot believe what this letter says, not without proof.”
“I’m well aware of that,” Griff replied.
“I want to go to England, to Benenden and see her for myself,” Yvette told them. “If there is the slightest chance that she really is . . .” Yvette closed her eyes.
Griff could not bear to see her in such pain. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up. This letter proves nothing except that someone wants to hurt us, someone who knows about what happened on Amara.”
“Whoever sent the letter signed it Malcolm York and that signature looks authentic,” Sanders pointed out to them. “But we know that it is not possible for him to be the real York. This man, whoever he is, is a fraud. And this girl mentioned in the letter, even if such a girl exists, may well be a fraud, also.”
“But what if she does exist? What if she’s not a fraud?” Yvette opened her tear-misted eyes and looked pleadingly at Griff. “If I can see her . . . touch her . . . I would know. Even without a DNA test.”
“It would take a DNA test to convince me,” Sanders said. “This man who calls himself Malcolm York has
